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X9 is cold when it wakes up.
This isn’t unusual—it is almost always cold, even when sent out on assignments. Its body is bad at trapping heat regardless of its costume. When X9 wakes up it cannot breathe properly. This is also not unusual.
(There is a five minute grace period for it to shudder and heave and panic around its closed throat and compressed lungs, but it has to be fast because compassion is costly and fear is ambiance. Once, they let it rest for a full ten minutes, its hands spread flat on the scuffed white floor, its body twisted from the fall, the dark mess of its hair in its face. No one touched it. It was relieved.)
X9 coughs violently as soon as the doors to its casket break open and its muscles lose the harsh rigidity of forced sleep all at once. It braces as best it can for the fall even knowing from bitter experience that it cannot catch itself in this state. It falls into someone’s arms instead, strong and shrouded in many layers. Panic erupts in its body before it can understand it isn’t hurting. It looks up at the tall blur holding it upright and it shudders so violently its teeth clack. It coughs harshly again. The person bends it over their arm with one hand in the middle of its back as they pull it from the cryochamber’s torturous indifference. It clings to the solid warmth as its moved effortlessly. Its back is pressed firmly but carefully against the wall—(vibration in its skin, crisp air in its nostrils, synthetic voice over the speakers)—against the bulkhead. Now that it can gasp it cannot stop gasping, its shoulders tight near its neck and its hands useless.
“Easy,” the man says, gruff.
X9 flinches, feeling the ghost of a blow that never lands and then locks itself down into something quiet and small. It cannot stop gasping and its eyes swim over the details of the man in front of it.
“Andor,” the man says. His voice is too calm to be a growl but its near enough. X9 does not know what an andor is. X9 just wants it to be over. Whatever this is, it wants it to be over. “Breathe. You’re going to pass out on my floor.”
The order registers and it tries to breathe normally, it truly does, but its heartbeat is a heavy thud in its stomach and it can’t get the hang of it. Desperation starts to test its fangs on X9’s throat and it doubles its efforts only to fail, panting and trembling. He’s going to blasterwhip it. This man is its handler for as long as Ghyron wants it away and he is going to blasterwhip it. Its back burns with the consequences of disobedience; there are no disciplinary devices that it can see apart from a blaster and its floundering body cannot obey the commands. He won’t kill it. He hasn’t used it yet.
“Here,” the man says and reaches into a compartment near its head. It keeps its gaze lowered and deliberately fights its instinct to shudder away from his hand. It sinks down as low as it can get into the quiet place behind its eyes. Something warm and soft is draped over its shoulders as it shakes and it grips the material as hard as it can without thinking. The splits in its knuckles sting.
“Do you know who I am?” asks the man.
X9 takes in the near military grade fabric hanging around his shoulders (armorweave, blaster proof to a point and resistant to vibroblades), his boots and gloves (well worn in and molded to his body), the concealed blaster on his hip and the short crop of his gray hair. His face is wrinkled, though he must have been handsome in his day. He’s tall, a least a head taller than X9. It can’t place the accent. It has no idea who this man is and dreads giving an answer.
“No sir,” it says and hopes feverishly that he wanted honesty and not some other answer. It hasn’t spoken since its punishment. Its throat is sore.
“Not at all?” the man questions again, softer this time. He leans down to look at it rather than lift its face and X9 makes eye contact on accident before its eyes dart away. It feels wrong footed and shaky, like it missed a beat in training.
Should it know? It was never shown a holo or even given instructions regarding this person. It remembers its heavy eyes watering as it lay with its cheek pressed to clammy, plastoid tiles when the restraints clicked opened and then the sound that tore out of its throat as it was hauled upright. It remembers the quick punch of a hypo in its neck and then the heavy weight of its head as it was dragged down the hall and into unconsciousness.
“No, sir,” it risks, sick with dread. It scans the room on instinct (droid mod in the cockpit, two exits) and studies the man’s collar to look attentive while avoiding his eyes.
“I’m Luthen Rael. You’re working with me now,” he says.
Rael looks confused almost, like X9 isn’t giving the answers he wants. He doesn’t seem angry and that twists its nerves in a different way, unable to predict what comes next. Ghyron would have been ignoring him by now, or else kept it in the chamber until it was needed. After Narkina 5, its held in cryosleep when not in use—it had been too successful at clearing the prison.
“Come, sit down,” Rael says as he firmly guides X9 by its shoulders.
It lets itself be handled without resistance, legs shaking. The chills are coming. It pulls the blanket tighter. There’s a false door in the adjacent bulkhead; the seams don’t line up right and the floor plan as it can see it doesn’t make sense otherwise. It ducks its head a fraction and hides behind its hair, shoulder’s hunched just enough to keep the warmth in. Rael moves away from it and searches through the small cabinets, their metal doors tossing the hazy reflection back to X9. Its drained, utterly. It hadn’t been put down right, it thinks. The muscles in its back contract and the burns ignite immediately. It shuts its eyes, wincing before it can stop itself.
“How do you take your kaff?” Rael asks.
Its eyes blink open, confused. Hyperspace whirls outside the portholes and the droid mod moves audibly and mechanically to look at it, trading one eye for another. Rael doesn’t elaborate. The quiet starts to grow teeth. There’s no reason he should ask it that; X9 cannot recall anyone ever asking it that.
“Sir?” it asks cautiously. It lifts its head so it can see Rael’s body language.
“Your kaff, how do you take it?”
That’s not an answer, that’s not even remotely an answer. It drops its gaze, staring at the deck like it could read the meaning in the scuff marks. Rael steps closer and X9 shrinks back. It can feel itself shaking, can feel the trembles down its arms and up its shredded back. Is this a code? It was never given the key.
“Its not a test, you aren’t in trouble,” Rael says. His voice is almost concerned. He keeps trying to catch its eyes with his.
It doesn’t know what he wants but it doesn’t know the truth, either. Its only ever had hot food and drink on missions, and then only to blend in.
(The first time it was sent out into the field, it was under heavy surveillance. It was supposed to wait for an Imperial soldier to order his drink and then approach. It was supposed to take the given intel, take the Imperial down the alley under the pretense of helping him escape, and then terminate him.
It took a bite of its food without thinking and then immediately lost all focus on the crowd in the city square with it. The food was salty and tangy—some kind of braised protein on a stick—and crispy and soft. It crackled under its jaws, melting over its tongue. The protein was fatty too, and its mouth was soon greasy with indulgence. It had never had something so delicious as this, hot under its teeth as it took another bite.
The mark ordered his drink. He sat down. X9 looked up, a moment too late. The chip activated for a fraction of a second and its vision went white from the agonizing split in its spine. It didn’t scream. It dropped the protein. It completed the mission objectives, but barely. It was heavily disciplined when it was retrieved. It didn’t eat for days—not until it was forced—for fear of what would happen to it. It never ate mission food again.)
In its fear it chooses an answer before Rael can ask again.
“With sweetener,” it answers at random, still avoiding his eyes. They look slate gray in this light. X9 feels they can see right down to its bones. It waits.
“Please,” it remembers. As if that will save it. It isn’t telling the truth but it isn’t technically lying, either. It hopes and despairs of hoping.
“So do I,” Rael answers and X9 could cry with relief. It hears him press the indent in the side of the container and then swirls the kaff to mix in the flavor before he peels off the lid. He hands it the flimsiboard cup, burning hot. “Here.”
It takes the kaff in two shaky hands and drinks immediately so it isn’t punished for hesitance. It learned that lesson early on. It doesn’t know what Rael is doing or if he spiked the kaff with something, only that its warmer now than it was. It burns its mouth when it drinks; it cannot care. The sweet and bitter flavors flood its tongue in a scalding wave and it takes another sip as soon as it swallows. Rael walks away and X9 tries to watch him out of the corner of its eye. The droid mod swivels and adjusts its lenses.
“Don’t spill it,” Rael says from the cockpit as he turns around.
“Yes, sir,” it answers instinctively.
--
Whatever Luthen believes, Kleya knows she’s right about the terror attacks. She is not an unconditional believer of hear-say and rumors, but every day the whispers on the meshwaves rise around the same story; a lone actor taking out entire Imperial sites alone and untraceable. They don’t have to believe the claims to investigate them and she knows this is worth at least some investigation, if only for the soft power of knowing all the current rumors.
One or two individuals making claims about an impossible machine blazing through Imperial soldiers as easily as fire rips through flimsy would be one thing, but dozens of credible reports from credible sources describing the same phenomenon in the same area within the same time frame is another.
There’s a pattern. It always starts small: a mid-level officer goes out on the town and doesn’t come back; a piece of equipment goes missing; a radio signal is intercepted and then terminated before anyone can even think of tracing the signal back. Then there’s a stretch of time—a cool down period Kleya suspects, so whoever is running the operation can see if the Empire will come looking for their pencil pushers or their baubles or their login credentials. They rarely do. She isn’t sure if this is because whoever these operatives are pick their targets exceptionally well and are unmatched in going undetected until the time is right, or if the Empire is truly so lazy and bloated that they can lose personnel and property and barely notice the loss. It’s likely both.
Then, finally, the attack. It’s always a garrison or a manufacturing plant, Imperial fuel refineries or comsat relays. Whoever they are always manages to find a weak link and shatter it with a brutality she previously only associated with the Empire itself.
A garrison on a mid-rim world is understaffed and therefore under guarded, and every single uniform in the compound is dead by the next rotation and their entire armory is picked clean. A fuel depot has a catastrophic failure and erupts with millions of tons of fighter craft fuel, leaving the entire region unreachable for days and hidden from orbit by the smoke. A single comsat relay is spiked and spreads the overloaded service requests to the next relay and then the next and then the next, to the point where multiple Imperial cruisers had no idea where they were in space and no way to navigate and no way to call for help.
Then the final strike. She doesn’t know what they send in but it’s powerful. Kleya suspects it to be a modified KX unit or a stolen Imperial hoverdroid. She’s been tracking it for months via a distinctive long range radio signal—something unlikely to be in a sentient being even if they have comms on them. It’s too deadly besides. The attacks leading up to the strikes might be carried out by people but she doesn’t know of anyone living or dead who could do that.
It’s always alone, always efficient. It has a kill radius like a detonator. Everything that comes within shooting range is dead. Four KX units could not stop it. A squadron of highly trained stormtroopers could not stop it. No one sees it arrive and no one sees it leave. It fights its way in, assassinates or steals or sabotages, and then fights its way out again and there’s never a single witness left breathing. Entire compounds are combed through for hours after an initial strike is done, the signal zig-zagging through rooms and hallways.
The meshcom node next to her bleeps in an insistent pattern and she answers, a little distracted by the movement of the signal. It’s stronger now, much stronger. It’s not unusual for the signal to be on Coruscant but it’s never been this close.
The ISB headquarters? she muses. It’d be foolhardy. Preparations alone would be highly sensitive and dangerous, regardless of how equipped the team behind the killing machine is.
“I’m in route, just had to pick up an extra artifact,” Luthen’s voice wafts out of the speaker, crackling.
What do you mean by that, Kleya grumbles internally. It better be something or someone to finally get Aldhani off the ground; their accounts are getting lean even with all the gun running Luthen has been doing in recent months.
“Acknowledged, do I need to make any preparations?” What are you dragging into my house?
“Nothing spectacular, just a tool kit,” Luthen says, tone warm for the radio. This frequency is mostly used for alibis and excuses. It’s necessary sometimes. “It’s damaged in a few places but hopefully it’s nothing unsalvageable.”
“How badly?” she pries carefully. He must be injured, or he wouldn’t be asking for a med kit. Luthen laughs for the radio. Kleya presses her finger to her headset to listen closer for heavy breathing or any muffled distress. Luthen is good at hiding when he’s hurt.
“Like I said, nothing so dire as to require our immediate attention. Maybe some tea, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Acknowledged,” she acquiesces, puzzled at the request. A med kit and a cup of tea, she thinks. And someone else in tow. They might be the injured party, but in that case why wasn’t the med kit on the haul craft sufficient? This person won’t be of much use to them if they’re hindered so badly. The signal edges closer.
She and Luthen have gone around and around the same discussion (not an argument—Kleya usually wins their arguments even if Luthen always, always needs the last word) again and again with the same conclusion: Luthen thinks the pattern is a coincidence and Kleya knows its not.
“What’s more likely? Several cells, all trying to achieve the same goals in similar ways or one cell doing all of this on their own? It’d be impossible to do alone.”
She concedes she doesn’t know how this mystery rebel cell funds any of their efforts, or who their leader is, or what kind of people are in their ranks and why. All she sees is a mode of operation and the same faint but clear signal, a single flare in the vastness of a dark ocean.
The meshcom node chirps at her again and she sees the signal come down as Luthen lands the haul-craft. She double checks, brow tightening. The little red light blinks in and out of color on her screen steadily, and then flickers as it begins to move. She breaths in slowly, eyes trained in the signal. She doesn't feel fear, but the tension between her nerves tightens like a bowstring. There's no emergency code from the haul craft, no indication that anything is wrong. She mentally catalogs all weapons and security measures.
For all the good it will do, she thinks grimly. The weapon is on board with Luthen and there is nothing she can do but wait. She gets up to fetch the med kit and put the kettle on to boil. She pins her hair back, anticipation condensing into subdued ferocity. Courascant drones outside the walls, the flashes of speeders rushing by shining in the windows. All she can do is wait.